


REANIMATOR

by redlight



Category: Hades (Video Game 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/F, Fluff, Introspection, Needles, Safe Sane and Consensual, Sewing patterns into skin, needleplay, rarepair hell!, than is a trans woman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:55:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28113504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redlight/pseuds/redlight
Summary: They're colleagues, of course, so they have aframeworkof each other's work ethic.
Relationships: Thanatos/Tisiphone (Hades Video Game)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11
Collections: Bulletproof 20/21





	REANIMATOR

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kimaracretak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/gifts).



One could scarcely mistake the immaculate attention Tisiphone puts into her work as caution, not with the reputation Tisiphone carries. But Tisiphone's fingers are skeletal-thin, and Thanatos is as familiar with skeletonization as she is familiar with her _own_ hands, the way her tendons and joints stretch and contract, the way her ligaments holdfast her bones, flat and amorphous and wide and long. 

And yet, she feels distant from Tisiphone.

They're colleagues, of course, so they have a _framework_ of each other's work ethic—Thanatos's workaholic indulgence and Tisiphone's worshipful sacrament. Perhaps they're both obsessed with their work, unhealthily so.

And yet, on these few vacation hours she can get, Thanatos savors the solace Tisiphone offers, even if reluctant.

The thing is, Tisiphone does take gentle care in her work, if her work could ever be gentle—Tisiphone punishes the cruelest cruelties of mortals and tortures them so, and yet her hands have a soft touch, a gentle handle on her tools. And perhaps Thanatos feels _that_ more keenly than she'd like to admit.

Tisiphone punctures Thanatos's skin without excessive force, without the ferocity of her sister alecto or the pressured diligence of megaera. No, Tisiphone is efficient and quick and isn't sloppy here, and she presses a needle and thread into Thanatos's mortal-veneer-fragile skin, and she works on the pattern.

Thanatos lets her choose as she pleases—Thanatos doesn't mind, and it's not as though she lets others see what lies beneath her cloak. Only Tisiphone would know, and the House of Hades wouldn't have a clue. Personal affairs and business don't mix, after all, and Thanatos makes sure to do this on her _personal_ hours. 

Thanatos flexes her shoulders, feels the push-and-pull of the thread in her flesh. She never really understood the fascination that other gods—Ares in particular, who unabashedly adores the gore and the injury itself as much as the giving thereof—have with humanistic countenance. The hundreds of bones and seemingly endless blood vessels lining all over, the intricate windings of organs necessary for every obscene function, the elaborate construction of breath to blood to bone to blood to breath. Often the gods simply take shape, hold onto a form for pleasure and physical interaction, but not many pay attention to the details of every inner working.

And yet, there is some appeal, feeling the sharp points of pain flare up her nerves with every needle-thread jolt inside her. Tisiphone marks patterns into her skin, makes _art_ of her skin. Thanatos cannot see what it will look like, not without a mirror or some godly tricks, but she can _feel_ the imprint of an image nearly as clearly as witnessing it. She _knows_ the shape of the corridors twisting below the wedge of her ribs, she _knows_ the fences and chains winding down her constructed vertebral column. She knows that Tisiphone draws tartarus, and she presses her fingers carefully against every needle and pinpoint, so light Thanatos could mistake it for affectionate.

" _Murderer_."

Thanatos sighs, low in her throat even as she relaxes into the touch. Tisiphone mumbles to herself, not particularly anguished or rageful. "Is that all, Tisiphone?"

Which is—a low blow, and it's not like Tisiphone is _wrong_ , when Thanatos is the one carrying souls of fearful mortals down to the underworld, her hands holding onto the terrified clutch of young children, new mothers, scared soldiers. In the loosest sense, Thanathos acts as murderer, but—

When she looks over to her, Tisiphone's face is clouded by her hair, unruly and curly and undone, falling about her like a storm. Thanatos hardly ever sees her like that, but then again, tisphone hardly ever sees her like _this,_ so perhaps it's a fair trade. And Tisiphone makes a low noise, a huff, maybe, before setting the current needle she's holding back down into her box full of other piercing needles and myriad colors of thread.

"...Did I upset you?" Thanatos asks. She feels the tug and pull in her skin, painful but fluid, a reminder of—what? Her own existence? Her eternal being? But she reaches toward Tisiphone and brushes some hair from her face, and finds her eyes narrowed and her lips in—a pout. Is that a pout?

Tisiphone stares at her.

"Okay, that was patronizing. I'm sorry."

She sticks another needle into Thanatos accordingly.

Tisiphone snorts, some facsimile of a laugh that lights a frost in Thanatos's skin, and she ducks her head to hide whatever blush must be in her face as Tisiphone brushes her hair away from her back and gets to work with a new color of thread. 


End file.
